Anyone who has watched sports has seen players and coaches cover their mouths so no one reads their lips. Has there ever been a credible report of any opposing team reading the lips of any coach or player?
Not that I know of, but who wants to be the coach who doesn’t think it’s possible (and, thus, doesn’t bother to cover his mouth), only to find out that it can be done?
Wouldn’t that great big microphone in front of the coach’s mouth interefere with lip reading?
Former Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel once got in trouble for abusive language to a referee based on evidence from a lipreader
The microphones aren’t so big that they completely obscure the mouth, I don’t think.
Current NFL headset:
Previous NFL headset:
I’m pretty sure I remember hearing an anecdote during a game about it. Something like a deaf person in an owner’s box pointed it out during a playoff game, and that’s why these coaches had recently started putting the giant crafts project play sheet in front of their faces. My memory is this was early 2000s.
That’s my vague memory. Now let’s see if I can google a source…nope. Best I can find is this page, which kind of feels AI-generated to me. It first credits Don Shula and then Tom Landry as the originator of covering your face when calling plays.
https://gillinghamfootballclub.co.uk/all-the-reasons-why-nfl-coaches-cover-their-mouth
I think it started in baseball with Greg Maddox. A tv camera caught him saying “fast ball” and it was signaled to a player who hit a home run.
It’s certainly possible to overhear and/or lipread the opposing players in doubles tennis. Compared to field sports, the players are much closer and the audience is much quieter.
But that’s among the players. Coaches are usually seated in the stands like any other spectator. Their shouts and signals are not hidden in any way, although they might be encoded.
Will “The Thrill” Clark in the 1989 divisional series, to be exact. The NFL guys when they got the radios 5 years later simply recalled said incident (even if in another sport) and automatically followed suit.
That’s my hypothesis too.
Greg Maddux (vs. Garry Maddox)-my fave pitcher ever so I’ll defend his honor.
I left out how baseball players and coaches/managers started hiding their mouths during mound conferences soon after said Giants/Cubs series.
This could be a corruption of a true story.
The football huddle was invented at Gallaudet College (now University, but it was College at the time), so teams could not see each others’ ASL.
But what exactly is a coach saying on the sideline? Is it “I think they’re in a cover two, so let’s try a screen pass to the tight end.”? More likely, it’s something like "Brown Right F Short 2 Jet Flanker Drive” or "Ace Left Fake 394 Dragon Smoke”. So even if the lip reader can discern what the coach is saying, do they have a clue what it means?
Off of a single play call, almost undoubtedly not. But, if you had films of a couple of games’ worth of plays, and what the coaches were saying as they called in the plays, you could translate what those strings of words meant.
This discussion reminds me of Tom Brady’s wristband play sheet.
I’m sure it all makes sense, but damn.
ETA thought I’d also throw in this breakdown of a single play, “Hop to Gun King Trips Right Tear 52 Sway All Go Special X-Shallow Cross H-Wide.”
Lip-reading is a myth. It ought to be called lip-guessing. Only about 35% of speech is visible. Good lip-readers are combining lip-reading, reading body language, using any input they get from hearing aids, their general knowledge of the language, and common sense. If someone seems to have said “The toilet in on the moon,” time to stop and ask for clarification.
If sports teams use code and jargon, they make lip-reading nigh on impossible.
Otherwise, the fact that the topics they are addressing are limited and knowable could aide to good lip-readers making out some information, but once you encode a lot of it, forget it.
Add distance, and it’s impossible.
I know hundreds of Deaf people, and a very common complaint is how often the media makes lip-reading look easy or even cute. Then people have horribly unreasonable expectations for them, and it creates and extra barrier to communication, when several already exist.
There is a limit to what kind of film can be used. It’s not legal to set up a camera on the coach and try to steal his signals. They can use the broadcast feed and the the film that captures the whole field. If they want to see the sidelines it has to be someone in person.
Not legal, no. Has been done, however: the “Spygate” scandal surrounding the Patriots in 2019 was all about illegally filming the opponent’s sideline.
https://www.nfl.com/news/patriots-docked-third-round-pick-fined-1-1m-for-filming-bengals-sideline